


Anything Can Happen

by Pyjamagurl



Category: Supernatural
Genre: 8x23, Amnesiac Castiel, BAMF Castiel, Canon Compliant, Coda, Fallen Castiel, Gen, Human Castiel, M/M, spoilers up to and including the finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-18
Updated: 2013-05-18
Packaged: 2017-12-12 05:24:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/807770
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pyjamagurl/pseuds/Pyjamagurl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Castiel starts over, not knowing who he is, but determined to do good, and feeling a lot like something (or someone) is missing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Anything Can Happen

**Author's Note:**

> So, this is what I'd kind of like to see with Fallen!Cas. I want a Cas who is independent and not reduced to humour and always relying on Dean. I want Dean to remain important to him of course, and this just jumped into my head a little after watching the finale. I've kind of wanted fallen!Cas for a long time, I hope they treat him well.
> 
> For V.

His life begins on the night of the meteor shower. Tears stream down his face and he doesn’t know why. He brushes them away with the sleeve of his coat, and turns away, stomach heavy in a way he can’t explain. 

He doesn’t know his name, can’t even remember what letter it might start with. He doesn’t remember where he came from or where he’s been, he just knows that he woke up in the woods one night when the sky was on fire. He came to life in an ill-fitting suit, dress shoes, and a tan trench coat. It doesn’t feel like him. He gets jeans and t-shirts, overshirts and a green army jacket from a thrift shop and pays for it all with a card he found in his pocket that reads ‘Dean Smith’ (and he’s pretty sure that’s not his name, Dean feels familiar, but not like it belongs to him, he can’t bring himself to tell people that’s his name). He gets hiking boots because they seem more sensible than dress shoes, and he puts all the clothes he came with in a canvas rucksack and takes them with him. 

He’s not really going anywhere. There are words in his head, a faint memory of someone telling him to find a wife and have a family but he doesn’t think that’s the right thing to do. How can he do that when he doesn’t even know who he is? 

There’s a niggle at the back of his mind that whispers about duty, and he doesn’t know what his duty is, but he likes to think it might be to do good. 

He comes across his first ‘monster’ by accident. A vampire attacking a young man in the alley behind a diner he happens to be in one night. There’s something methodical and familiar about slaying it, and once he’s taken it’s head off and burned the remains, he looks at his reflection in a motel mirror and wonders why he doesn’t feel like he’s changed. Perhaps this is his purpose. Perhaps he’s meant to save people from monsters. Someone has to, right?

So that’s what he does. He hunts monsters. He learns to drive—he stalls the first couple of times, but quickly gets the hang of it—and follows the road until his gut tells him to stop. He learns small things about himself as he goes along the way and wonders what was true before. Who was he before?

He’s not a young man by any means—he would guess mid-to-late thirties—but he has no tattoos, no scars that he can recall the means of. He has messy dark brown hair and blue eyes, and absolutely nothing about his appearance tells him who he is. He has no wallet, and no phone, absolutely nothing except a credit card that probably isn’t his. 

He likes burgers, and black coffee; he likes peanut butter (the crunchy kind) and salted popcorn but not the sweet kind. He likes key lime pie, and cherry pie, but isn’t so fond of pecan. He doesn’t like liquorice, and the one time he tried mushrooms he ended up spending his night on the toilet (it’s not an experience he’s going to repeat). 

He doesn’t smoke, but he does drink (beer, and whiskey are two things he’s realised he has an acquired taste for) though quickly learns where his limits are.

He likes cartoons and science fiction, and sometimes he watches a hospital drama that makes him laugh and think of someone he can’t quite remember. He catches himself turning to look, like he’s expecting to see someone else sitting on the other side of his motel bed. He can’t even explain the odd emptiness he feels when he realises he’s alone. He drinks a little more than he should on those nights.

He watches E.T and doesn’t know why a sense of understanding dawns on him. 

He’s on his own for a month, flitting town to town. He follows newspaper articles reporting strange occurrences and gruesome deaths. He meets creatures he’s never heard of and researches them later. He saves people and it makes him feel like he’s accomplishing something. He’s a dab hand with a gun, and swift with a blade, and a part of him wonders if he was a soldier before. 

It’s after a close shave with a ghoul—he gets a gash to his ribs for his trouble, but nothing that he can’t patch up himself—that he finds himself in a diner in Kansas. He’s trying a chocolate malt milkshake and waiting for a bacon double cheeseburger when someone says his name. 

He thinks it’s his name anyway. It resonates in a way he can’t explain. 

‘Cas?’ the voice is deep, disbelieving. He turns around slowly, unsure about what he is reacting to. 

Standing in the doorway is a man with brown hair and green eyes, broad shoulders and bandy legged. The man’s attire isn’t that much different from his own, and the look of shock and disbelieving happiness on the man’s face make him think that he must be who this man is looking for. Cas. It kind of fits.

He tilts his head as he looks at the other man, he does feel like he knows him from somewhere. There’s a name on the tip of his tongue and he wracks his brain before he settles on—

‘Dean?’

Dean’s eyebrows raise, and he crosses the space between them in three steps. He’d known the name wasn’t his own. Dean Smith doesn’t feel right though.

‘Cas,’ he says again, and then he’s drawing Cas into an awkward hug—Cas’ shoulder is up against Dean’s sternum, his arms awkwardly around his shoulders—and it’s when Dean’s cheek brushes against his own that the memories flicker in. 

Death, pain beyond imagining, hell, fire, loss, confusion, mistakes, distrust. Dean laughing, Dean and Cas in a car, Dean embracing Cas in an hold not much less awkward than this one. It’s not much, but it’s a start. A confusing, terrifying start. 

Dean Winchester is saved. Castiel is lost. 

Cas. Castiel is an angel. Castiel has slain his own kind, and broken the world, and he’s been paying penance for the last month by saving people from things he’s always been saving people from. He’s a protector. It’s his duty. 

‘Where the hell have you been man,’ Dean asks when he pulls away, and Cas watches him as he takes the stool beside Cas’. There’s something hurt and confused on Dean’s face now. 

‘I… don’t remember.’

‘We thought you were dead, or locked in Heaven,’ Dean says, he pauses as a waitress puts Cas’ burger down in front of him and he eyes the plate. ‘I thought… I thought you closed the gates. I thought that was you.’

‘Gates?’ Cas says, puzzled. 

‘Of Heaven?’ Dean says, looking just as confused as Cas feels. ‘Metatron?

‘I don’t remember...’ he trails off, and there’s worry in Dean’s eyes but not in his face. 

‘Jesus,’ Dean says, running a hand over his face. He looks away, knee bouncing like he can’t keep still, and Cas doesn’t know what to do. There’s still a rush of things slowly making sense in his head. ‘You don’t remember anything?’

‘I remember… flickers,’ he says. ‘But only now, here.’

He’d had his grace removed, but a part of it lives on with Dean. A part of it is anchored right here because when Cas pulled Dean out of hell he lost a part of himself to the man beside him. Because Dean is good, but Dean was broken. Dean is whole now because Cas put him back together again. 

‘You’re human now?’ Dean asks, something passing over his face that Cas doesn’t recognise. Like a past remembered that he isn’t privy to. 

‘Yes.’

‘Did you fall like the others?’

‘The others?’ Cas asks, tilting his head to look at Dean. There’s a flash of the meteor shower in his mind, his heart beats a little faster. 

‘The angels, they fell,’ Dean says. ‘Looked a lot like a meteor shower I guess.’

‘No… I. I remember that.’

‘So you still—‘

‘My grace, it was taken…’

Dean’s head snaps around to look at him again, realisation dawning on his face. 

‘Metatron?’ Dean asks, and something must show on Cas’ face because he swears and then bites at his lip. ‘Knew there was something fishy about him hiding out for that long. Bastard knew Sam would die if he completed the trials too.’

‘How is Sam?’

‘Sam’s good,’ Dean says, then ‘most days anyway. He’s on the mend.’

‘Good.’

‘You?’

‘Me?’

‘Yeah, you. What about you.’

‘As well as can be expected I guess,’ Cas says, he hasn’t really stopped to think how he is, and now he does there’s only one word that really sums it up. ‘Human.’

Dean looks like he’s about to say something else but stops himself, instead he looks at Cas like he’s taking him all in. Like there’s something strange and unusual about him. Like something is missing.

‘You look like a hunter,’ Dean says, and Cas knows he’s thinking _you look like me._

Cas is saved from answering when the waitress puts a plate down in front of him, she looks to Dean and asks if he wants anything. He orders three burgers and fries and three cokes to go. The waitress jots it all down and then disappears into the kitchen. 

It takes ten minutes, and Cas is halfway through his burger when the waitress returns with a white paper bag of food and a tray with three cups. Dean picks up Cas’ shake—he thinks he likes it—and slots it into the last space. 

‘You coming?’

‘Where are we going?’ Cas asks, turning on his stool as Dean stands up, watching as Dean heads towards the door. 

‘Grab your burger, come on,’ Dean says.

‘Dean.’

‘Home,’ Dean says. ‘We’re going home.’ 

‘Where’s that?’ Cas says, taking what’s left of his burger and wrapping it in a napkin before he heads after Dean. He shoulders his bag and follows Dean out into the late afternoon sun where there’s a sleek black car waiting out front. He knows that car.

‘It’s a secret,’ Dean says with a wink, opening the drivers side door. Cas makes his way to the passenger side, sinking into the familiar leather seat. He remembers and doesn’t at the same time, a flicker of a memory; _what would you rather have, peace or freedom._

‘I don’t think I have a home anymore,’ Cas says, frowning when Dean dumps the food in Cas’ lap. It’s easy for Dean to say the words, for him to say home when Cas isn’t sure he belongs anywhere now. 

‘Sometimes you’ve got to make yourself a home and make do,’ Dean says, spurring the engine to life. He looks over at Cas like he’s making sure he’s still there, and then pulls away from the curb. 

‘Am I welcome?’

‘If you want to be,’ Dean says, and there’s an edge to his voice, a hurt that Cas knows he can’t soothe just yet. He’s left before, he knows that much. He studies Dean’s profile; the set to Dean’s jaw, the eyes staring resolutely forward, there’s pain there. 

‘For what it’s worth, I’m sorry.’

‘Yeah,’ Dean says. ‘Yeah, you’ve said that before.’

‘I mean it,’ Cas says. ‘I thought… I thought I was acting in everyone’s best interests.’

‘I know, man,’ Dean says, flicking him a look. ‘You were duped. That’s not your fault. We just gotta… fix it if we can.’

‘Can we?’

‘Anything is possible,’ Dean says. ‘You came back didn’t you?’

_Yes_ , Cas thinks, and maybe he isn’t as alone as he thought. There’s Dean and there’s Sam, but more than that there are the angels who fell from Heaven and perhaps they are as lost and overwhelmed as he is. Perhaps he can finally make amends on his own terms. 

There’s things Cas has learned about himself in the last month. He knows that something was missing until Dean walked into that diner. He knows, now, that his life is something bigger and vaster than he ever imagined. He’s more than a soldier, he’s a warrior of God who lost his way once or twice but at his core remained unwaveringly _good_. He remembers the words ‘when you die, and come back to Heaven, tell me a story’ and he thinks he will. 

Just not the one that Metatron is expecting. No, Castiel is more than that, and this is just the beginning. 

Anything can happen.


End file.
